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Next Meeting - 10th October, 2pm, Enlightenment, Sarah Perry. Read to read to the end Then, The Director, Daniel Kehlmann 24th October, read to the end of chapter titled “Jerzabek”, 31st October, read to the end of chapter titled “Summer Vacation”. Next Book - This is Happiness Niall Williams Current Spreadsheet - | Meeting URL - |
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Put book suggestions here. You don't need a google account or to log in in any way. Just type your name in the 'comment as' pull down so I know who suggested what
ReplyDeleteRachel: My favourite bookseller is saying interesting things about Sebastian Barry's latest, Old God's Time: https://www.abbeys.com.au/book/old-gods-time-9780571332786.do
ReplyDeleteThe only Barry I've ever read is The Secret Scripture. And I'm up for any of his.
https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/prize-years/international/2023
ReplyDeleteThis newly announced Booker International long list looks interesting!
From The Saturday Paper's book review: Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton. "...The central conflict unfolds when the tree-planting collective Birnam Wood accepts dubious funding from the American billionaire Robert Lemoine... a Machiavellian antagonist who uses an eccentric cover story of being a doomsday survivalist to misdirect attention from illegal excavations of rare minerals in a National Park. With his army of surveillance drones and black-hacker skills, [he] plays puppet master with Birnam Wood... As in The Luminaries, villains rarely believe they're doing the devil's work and good people commit atrocities. ...Catton counterbalances an entertaining and fast-paced plot with psychological dives into the motivations and fallacies or her characters. The result is a masterful contemporary satire: grandiose and biting but never highfalutin." Interesting? Rachel
ReplyDeleteMy guess is we won't be up to a book poll for a couple of months, but good to have the suggestions here and ready. Also, probably irrelevant, but Lemoine is the name of the google engineer who thought his AI was sentient
DeleteFor the next set of nominations: “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” by Mohsin Hamid
ReplyDeleteKeep the suggestions coming!
DeleteRuth suggests Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow for the next poll
ReplyDeleteCold Enough is a novella of less than 100 pages. Very happy to read and discuss it with you all, but only if we read it in a single week.
DeleteLooks like an interesting list - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jun/24/summer-reading-50-brilliant-books-to-discover#fiction
ReplyDeleteGreat list! Several Booker nominees ahead of the judges, too.
DeleteOf these, I'd most be interested in
Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin
Tomás Nevinson by Javier Marías
The Short End of the Sonnenallee by Thomas Brussig
Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton (which I think I've already mentioned)
August Blue by Deborah Levy - in fact, I'd be happy to read anything by her: I've read nothing, but keep bumping into her name
Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan - it's the sequel on the list, called The Happy Couple, but I'd be happier to start at the beginning with Exciting Times.
These all look interesting.
Delete2023 Booker prize long list is out! Some goodies here to read.
ReplyDeletehttps://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/prize-years/2023
House of Doors sounds intriguing, amongst others!
Very happy to read House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng (I read his earlier Garden of Evening Mists). Also interested to read -
DeleteWestern Lane by Chetna Maroo
How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney
A Spell of Good Things by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀
Anam by André Dao came out this year. In some ways it'd be brave to read it - the ABC description below says it references some of the brightest minds of recent centuries... and that the author's attempt to write this fictionalised account of his grandfather's life only came together when he inserted himself into the story... too much like Time Shelter??
DeleteOn the other hand it's Australian/cosmopolitan rather than Eastern European/cosmopolitan and deals with issues including our treatment of refugees, immigration, and buried family histories. The author's Vietnamese family came to Australia (some as boat people, some by plane from Paris).
It's described as autofiction, so not memoir, not fiction, but blurs those boundaries.
Amanda, if you'd like me to visit the book in the bookshop to confirm that the first 5-10 pages are readable before you put this one on the poll, just say.
I'd be interested to try this book with you all.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-10/australian-author-andre-dao-anam-family-history/102453014
Read Percival Everett's The Trees from the 2022 Booker shortlist & found it remarkable. I'd like to read his latest, Dr No with you all, even if the Washington Post does say that it's not as good as The Trees. And yes, Dr No was published in 2022, the 60th Anniversary of the Fleming novel.
DeleteThe review says: Most of “Dr. No” is a goofy anti-thriller that revolves around Sill’s evil schemes and Wala’s halting efforts to thwart them. Yes, there are gorgeous robots, a devastating space laser, a pool of man-eating sharks under the dining room and lots of diabolical chuckling. But needless to say, Wala is no Sean Connery. He knows nothing. He’s never touched a woman. And forget the Sunbeam Alpine Series II. Wala doesn’t even know how to drive. All of which Everett exploits to parody both the Bond films and the bizarro world of physics and mathematics in the outer limits of reality.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/11/08/percival-everett-dr-no-novel/
Yellowface looks fun https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2023/may/21/yellowface-by-rebecca-f-kuang-a-wickedly-funny-publishing-thriller
ReplyDeleteRachel: Yep, as does her first book, Babel.
DeleteRachel
ReplyDeleteLook who's got a brand new book about to hit the book shops. Zadie Smith - looks like fun
https://www.abbeys.com.au/book/the-fraud-9780241337004.do
Suggestion for next book poll - At Swim-Two-BIrds. Flan O'Brien
ReplyDeleteI wonder if it would be interesting to (re)read Helen Garner’s First Stone at its 25 year anniversary, I know I would love to read it again (now that I’m older) and with a great group of people to discuss it with.
ReplyDeleteRachel kindly reminded me this one was a non fiction, and my interest has also waned since I first though of it - so will take this one off the suggestion list.
DeleteFor the next book poll: The Inheritance of Orquidea Divina by Zoraida Cordova
ReplyDeleteThis book sounds fascinating!
DeleteFor the next poll: Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk
ReplyDeleteAmanda has read this one, so maybe try Flight by the same author (OlgaT)?
DeleteTHE STOLEN BICYCLE
ReplyDeleteWu Ming-Yi
Hi, it's Rachel, not anonymous.
ReplyDeleteTaiwanese futurist fiction (22ndC)? Climate change, gender issues, robots...
Membranes by Ta-wei Chi
Everyone now lives under the sea because of climate change. We follow the story of Momo, the top skincare specialist in T City. The novel deals with Momo’s mental state and new technology as well as climate change and a major plot twist.
Again, Rachel: has everyone already read Tom Lake by Ann Patchett. It was recommended to me by a VERY astute reader, and I haven't read a Patchett novel for years. Good one to try?
ReplyDeleteAgain, Rachel: Has everyone already read Booth by Karen Joy Fowler? (Not about Lincoln's assassin, except of course, it is.) Mum's book club read it and Mum said it was chockers with side-alley explanations of things not in the main storyline, but all intriguing.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the blurb, Fowler is trying to do something hard: to write about a villain without paying this attention seeking soul too much more attention. She innovates. She doesn’t only tell the decades-spanning story of the entire Booth family, a clan in which John is one among many. She also pulls the reader out of the 19th century over and over to provide a 21st century perspective on the attitudes and actions of her characters.
Also from the blurbs, Fowler is interested to show that a US politics of chaos arising from populism and fanaticism is nothing new.
Rachel again: Anna's keen to read Olga Tokarczuk (and why not?) and I'm keen to read OT's translator's first novel. It's not yet out, so we'd need to put it at the end of the list, if it made it through the poll.
ReplyDeleteThe Extinction of Irena Rey by Jennifer Croft
It's got an immensely complicated plot, any number of plot twists and you shouldn't vote for it if you aren't interested in contemplating the conundrums of translation.
Last (at least last for now) from Rachel: we said as we finished Trust that we were really keen to read Hernan Diaz' first novel... it only short-listed for the Pulitzer, which Trust only his second novel, won.
ReplyDeleteIf we don't put it early in our reading order, I may not be able to restrain myself from reading it - I'd bought it before the book club discussion that said we should read it together...
Hernan Diaz' In the Distance.
Anil's Ghost By Michael Ondaatje (Ruth’s suggestion captured here so we don’t forget)
ReplyDeleteYeah, I know. We haven't even finished voting & I'm posting.... Maybe by the next vote this one will be available in paperback!
ReplyDelete“I Am Homeless if This Is Not My Home” by Lorrie Moore
A young man goes on a road trip with the animated corpse of his ex-girlfriend, who died by suicide, in a ghost story and zombie romance that takes place in both the 19th and 21st centuries. In a Times review of the novel, Moore’s first in 14 years, Dwight Garner praised Moore as “a consummate user of the English language; her moisture-wicking sentences confirm and reconfirm your sanity.”
It won the (US) National Books Critics Circle Award for Fiction in March 2024
Can we read something about Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk? e.g. Snow?
ReplyDeleteYes please to Snow. Rachel
DeleteShankari Chandran, who wrote Chai Time at the Cinnamon Gardens (twee title, good read) has a book out called Safe Haven. That's my suggestions for the next book poll
ReplyDeleteLook what's been made!!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk2iYUC56h8
Screened at Rotterdam in February and voted in the top 20 films in the 2024 IFFR program by the International Film Festival Rotterdam audience...
I tried to post a still from the film, but failed. Sorry because it's gorgeously bleak winter shot. Very Donbas. Rachel
Hi, this is Rachel, posting on behalf of Linda, who is proposing for the next poll -
ReplyDeleteThe Pretender, Jo Harkin, 496 pages
(This one is newly published here and the bookstore owner looked it up for Australian publication and that is currently set for Sept 2025.)
A sweeping historical novel in the vein of Hilary Mantel and Maggie O’Farrell set during the time of the Tudors’ ascent. The Pretender tells the story of Lambert Simnel, who was raised in obscurity as a peasant boy to protect his safety, believed to be the heir to the throne occupied by Richard III, and briefly crowned, at the age of ten, as King Edward the Sixth, one of the last of the Plantagenets.